Has anyone tried container gardening with sub-irrigated planters like the Earth Box or the Garden Patch? I thought they sounded really gimmick-y, especially how the Garden Patch's website present itself, but if people around the web are for real you can get some absurdly huge yields, even as a black-thumbed person.

If you've used them, what has your experience been like? If you haven't and wouldn't, why not?

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Joined: Fri Apr 01, 2011 11:51 amPosts: 8120Location: United States of New England

i have something similar i believe. my parents bought us a tomato planter we put on our deck that looks kinda similar to the garden patch thing.

its a rectangular bucket type thing that you put the dirt in and it has soem sort of compartment underneath that holds the water wtih the dirt about it i believe. not sure im describing that right.

i always plant cherry tomatoes in it and they do really really well.last year was the first year we tried a regular tomato plant in the garden and the cherry tomatoes in the planter on the deck and the regular tomato plant in the garden didnt do well at all but i think our deck gets more sun and heat from the house than the garden.

this year i put cherry tomatoes in the planter and then i have two terra cotta pots on the deck with regular tomatoes and the cherry tomatoes in the planter are doing way way better.

i like it because it came with a little wheelie skateboard thing you can put underneath it to move it around easier. our deck is moronic and is only like 2 feet wide so its hard to navigate around things. the wheelie thing makes it easier to prune the plant

Has anyone tried container gardening with sub-irrigated planters like the Earth Box or the Garden Patch? I thought they sounded really gimmick-y, especially how the Garden Patch's website present itself, but if people around the web are for real you can get some absurdly huge yields, even as a black-thumbed person.

If you've used them, what has your experience been like? If you haven't and wouldn't, why not?

I've used them for tomato plants and they work incredibly well if done right. In fact, the plants really seemed to grow like crazy with this method. I also made my own with 5-gallon pickle buckets from Subway and Jimmy Johns. I have some photos of how they're put together at the end of this blog post;

2 buckets, one to nest inside the other, make sure they're food grade and haven't contained caustic chemicals or paint1 yogurt container for the wickkeep 1 lid for the top bucket to keep squirrels from digging1 PVC tube for watering

Tools:

drill and various bitssharp knife

Insanely easy to put together. The hardest part was creating a trellis for the tomatos. I set them next to the deck and sort of strapped the growing plants to the deck.

If you're unsure of the method, try it with cheap buckets before plunking down cash on fancy name-brand stuff. I read that large Rubbermaid containers work too but I haven't tried that method.

_________________Alina NiemiAuthor of The New Scoop: Recipes for Dairy-Free, Vegan Ice Cream in Unusual Flavors (Plus Some Old Favorites),Lizard Lunch and Other Funny Animal Poems for Kids, and The Hawaii Doodle Bookhttp://alinaspencil.com